What 60s-70s-80s animation has been restored and is available in HD?
March 24, 2017 12:51 PM Subscribe
I'm looking for some good examples of 60s-70s animation that has been restored and is available in good HD quality. Think simpler, cheap stuff like Hanna-Barbera style stuff or similar.
I have a work project to do image restoration on some classic animation, I have done quite a lot of film restoration, but only live action, never animation, so before I get started, I'd really like to take a look at what other cartoons from this period have been restored in HD, ideally scanned from original 35mm film and cleaned up, to see what the industry standard is.
And this is where I'm coming up a bit blank, because it turns out this is a bit hard to search for, and even if I found some HD stuff, it's hard to tell if it's just bad quality upscales from old standard definition copies, or if it's newly scanned and restored.
Ideally, I'd like stuff similar in style to what I have, so for reference, painted, soft backgrounds and sharp line art simple animated characters with flat colors on top. 60s-70s Hanna-Barbera like Scooby Doo, Jetsons, The Flintstones and such, but also things like the French "Once Upon a Time" series, and even some early 80s Saturday Morning stuff like He-Man. Anime might also be interesting, although the style of linework and background painting tends to be different, but maybe some earlier 70s stuff might work. Disney likewise is probably more detailed and higher quality than what I'm looking for, I think. The screen captures in this article are quite close to the style I'm looking for.
I mostly need to know what to look for, it doesn't matter as much how it's available, as long as it's HD, I can either order Blu-Rays, see if any streaming services have it, or even if it's on YouTube and similar, I guess. I'm also open to suggestions for other forums and such where I can ask about this. Maybe something on (shudder) Reddit?
I have a work project to do image restoration on some classic animation, I have done quite a lot of film restoration, but only live action, never animation, so before I get started, I'd really like to take a look at what other cartoons from this period have been restored in HD, ideally scanned from original 35mm film and cleaned up, to see what the industry standard is.
And this is where I'm coming up a bit blank, because it turns out this is a bit hard to search for, and even if I found some HD stuff, it's hard to tell if it's just bad quality upscales from old standard definition copies, or if it's newly scanned and restored.
Ideally, I'd like stuff similar in style to what I have, so for reference, painted, soft backgrounds and sharp line art simple animated characters with flat colors on top. 60s-70s Hanna-Barbera like Scooby Doo, Jetsons, The Flintstones and such, but also things like the French "Once Upon a Time" series, and even some early 80s Saturday Morning stuff like He-Man. Anime might also be interesting, although the style of linework and background painting tends to be different, but maybe some earlier 70s stuff might work. Disney likewise is probably more detailed and higher quality than what I'm looking for, I think. The screen captures in this article are quite close to the style I'm looking for.
I mostly need to know what to look for, it doesn't matter as much how it's available, as long as it's HD, I can either order Blu-Rays, see if any streaming services have it, or even if it's on YouTube and similar, I guess. I'm also open to suggestions for other forums and such where I can ask about this. Maybe something on (shudder) Reddit?
Response by poster: Ufez Jones, that'd be an excellent suggestion, but it's a bit late for me. Thanks, though, that's the kind of thing I'm looking for.
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 1:21 PM on March 24, 2017
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 1:21 PM on March 24, 2017
Fantastic Planet (1973) has been remastered. Great weird French art flick too. It happens to be on Youtube right now, but "only" in 720p. That resolution may be considered "HD" for some purposes, but perhaps not for others. So it might help to clarify what minimum resolution should be.
Actually, I'm not entirely sure what you want. Plenty of animation from the 60s-70s has been remastered from 35mm film, but might not exist (yet) as 1080p digital media. So: are you more interested in animation clean up and remastering, or things that are easily available as digital media with a certain resolution, or does it have to be both?
posted by SaltySalticid at 1:39 PM on March 24, 2017
Actually, I'm not entirely sure what you want. Plenty of animation from the 60s-70s has been remastered from 35mm film, but might not exist (yet) as 1080p digital media. So: are you more interested in animation clean up and remastering, or things that are easily available as digital media with a certain resolution, or does it have to be both?
posted by SaltySalticid at 1:39 PM on March 24, 2017
Star Trek: The Animated Series is available on Blu-ray.
posted by Automocar at 2:23 PM on March 24, 2017
posted by Automocar at 2:23 PM on March 24, 2017
Most of the cartoons on the Looney Tunes blu ray sets are too old for your timeframe, but there are a small number of 1960s+ shorts to be found. You can see which 1960s Looney Tunes are available in HD here.
posted by Aznable at 2:41 PM on March 24, 2017
posted by Aznable at 2:41 PM on March 24, 2017
Response by poster: Fantastic Planet is indeed quite fantastic, but a very different style from what I'm looking for.
And yes, basically I'm interested in animation from that time frame that has been remastered and cleaned up recently, in 1080p (although I could live with 720p), and that has more or less the same style I'm working with. Availability is only important in the sense that I'd like to actually be able to see it, either by ordering Blu-Rays, buying or streaming online, or something similar.
The somewhat technical reason is that up until fairly recently, most transfer of film to video was done on telecines, even in HD, and this is a real-time process that allowed some color correction, but little else, while newer remastering is done by frame-by-frame scanning, and a lot of digital touchup, dust and dirt removal, grain and noise reduction and such is possible. My stipulation of HD was mostly a shorthand to get fairly recent stuff in good quality that has been done to state of the art levels, so that I can see roughly what the state of the art is for animation from that period.
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 4:32 PM on March 24, 2017 [1 favorite]
And yes, basically I'm interested in animation from that time frame that has been remastered and cleaned up recently, in 1080p (although I could live with 720p), and that has more or less the same style I'm working with. Availability is only important in the sense that I'd like to actually be able to see it, either by ordering Blu-Rays, buying or streaming online, or something similar.
The somewhat technical reason is that up until fairly recently, most transfer of film to video was done on telecines, even in HD, and this is a real-time process that allowed some color correction, but little else, while newer remastering is done by frame-by-frame scanning, and a lot of digital touchup, dust and dirt removal, grain and noise reduction and such is possible. My stipulation of HD was mostly a shorthand to get fairly recent stuff in good quality that has been done to state of the art levels, so that I can see roughly what the state of the art is for animation from that period.
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 4:32 PM on March 24, 2017 [1 favorite]
Too early for you, but the National Film Board of Canada recently won an award for high-def restorations of Norman McLaren's work.
posted by scruss at 7:45 AM on March 25, 2017
posted by scruss at 7:45 AM on March 25, 2017
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by Ufez Jones at 1:11 PM on March 24, 2017